Pakistan’s signs of weakness

Gulf News, February 28, 2007

Developments of the last fortnight can be seen as a sort of balance sheet reflecting the strengths and weaknesses of the Pakistani state. During this period, Pakistan successfully tested the latest version of its long-range nuclear-capable missile.

The Hatf VI (Shaheen II) ballistic missile, launched from an undisclosed location, is said to have a range of 2,000 kilometres and has the capability to hit major cities in India, according to Pakistan’s military.

For those who measure Pakistan’s success in terms of a military balance against India, this addition to Pakistan’s missile arsenal is a sign of the country’s expanding strength.

Other events, however, indicate that Pakistan’s supposed ability to externally project its power is not matched with the potency of an effective state at home.

Up to 17 people, including a senior civil judge, were killed and 30 wounded in a powerful suicide bombing in the Quetta District Courts compound on February 17.

The next day, two children were killed and three security force personnel were seriously injured in two separate landmine explosions in Balochistan. The same day, at least 68 people were killed and over 50 wounded in a fire that swept through two coaches of the India-Pakistan Samjhauta Express.

In the relatively sleepy central Punjab town of Cheechawatni, three suspected militants were killed when a bomb they were carrying on a bicycle accidentally exploded.

Shot and killed

On February 20 an Islamist “fanatic” shot and killed the Punjab provincial social welfare minister, Zile Huma Usman, in an open court in Gujranwala. The attacker said he wanted to punish the woman minister for not covering her face, which he considers obligatory under his interpretation of Islam’s concept of hijab.

Usman’s killer also revealed that he wanted to kill Benazir Bhutto, the Muslim world’s first woman prime minister, for offending him by keeping her face uncovered.

A couple of days later, at least seven people were seriously injured in two separate landmine explosions in Balochistan while unknown assailants blew up a gas pipeline in the restive province.

Several hundred female students from an Islamic seminary in the centre of Islamabad have been holed up for the last month inside a public library. The protesters’ supporters have threatened that a campaign of suicide bombings would follow if they are forcibly evicted from the occupied library.

Five private English medium schools providing co-education in Peshawar were forced to remain closed after they were told that suicide bombers might target co-education private schools.

A school for girls in Mardan was warned that its building would be bombed if teachers and students did not start observing hijab or wearing veils.

In other news with bad implications, an editor of an Urdu daily, Sohail Qalander, and his friend, Mohammad Niaz, managed to escape from captors who had kidnapped them almost two months ago.

Qalander said he and his colleague were held somewhere in the tribal areas along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan and were tortured and threatened. The kidnappers demanded the journalists “stop writing against smugglers, kidnappers and mafia groups”.

The negative news stories of the last 15 days affirm what official Pakistan refuses to acknowledge, the gradual weakening of the Pakistani state. Notwithstanding the possession of nuclear weapons and missiles, Pakistan is far from being an effective state.

In fact, one can argue that in the process of building extensive military capabilities, Pakistan’s successive rulers have allowed the degradation of essential internal attributes of statehood.

An important attribute of a state is its ability to maintain monopoly, or at least the preponderance, of public coercion. The proliferation of insurgents, militias, Mafiosi and high ordinary criminality reflect the state’s weakness in this key area.

Discussion of Pakistan’s politics, especially its successes and failures, is almost always about the personalities rather than the issues. As the Pakistani state falters, it is time not to talk only in terms of whether one individual is better for the country or another. It is time to identify where the Pakistani state has lost its direction.

A modern state is distinguished by impersonal rule. Personalisation, corruption, familial dominance and re-tribalisation are considered signs of weakening of the state.

Failures of rule of law, weak judiciaries, failures of regulation and the dominance of a lawless executive, coupled with the failure to maintain public goods (education, environment, public health, electricity and water supply) are all considered indicators of state failure by political scientists.

Autonomists, secessionists, irredentists and vacuum fillers emerge wherever the dimensions of being a state begin to weaken.

Instead of focusing all their energies on maintaining military power, Pakistan’s rulers must recognise the weakening of essential qualities of being a state reflected in the general lawlessness and widespread violence in the country.

Adherence to the constitution, restoration of rule of law, normal contestation for power, and the rebuilding of civilian institutions are essential if Pakistan is to avoid a slide into anarchy.

Stuck in Second Gear

Indian Express, February 21, 2007

The outgoing US Ambassador to Pakistan, Ryan Crocker, has attempted to resolve the apparent contradiction between Washington’s view of General Pervez Musharraf as a critical ally in the war against terrorism and intelligence about terrorists still operating out of Pakistan.

“Pakistan has been fighting terrorists for several years and its commitment to counterterrorism remains firm,” Crocker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the hearing on his nomination as US ambassador to Iraq. The challenge faced by Pakistan in coming to terms with Taliban fighters along its border with Afghanistan, he explained, lies in a lack of ‘capacity.’

As suicide bombings and general lawlessness illustrate the insecurity of millions of Pakistanis, Pakistan’s self-congratulating elite can now sit in the comfort of its drawing rooms and debate a new issue: What is worse — being doubted for lack of commitment as an American ally or being recognised as an incapable one?

Clearly, from the US point of view the task expected of Pakistan is not being accomplished. One implication of Crocker’s assessment is that Pakistan must now brace itself for pressure in improving its capacity. Alternatively, it would have to allow other US allies, possibly NATO, to complete the task to which General Musharraf is committed but which Pakistan’s military and law enforcement machinery are unable to do.

The underlying message in Crocker’s faint praise for Pakistan must not go unheeded. Finding friendly rulers and then bolstering their capacity to fulfil strategic objectives has been the mainstay of US foreign policy in the greater Middle East for years. For this policy to work, US diplomats must gloss over the flaws and weaknesses of allies and ensure a constant flow of military and economic assistance. The aid, and the dependence that results from it, is supposed to buy the US influence.

Concerns about democracy and human rights must be played down and critics must be assured that “slow but sure reform” is on its way. The economic growth that results from injection of large doses of aid, coupled with stage-managed elections and some diversity in a semi-controlled media, are useful instruments of convincing sceptics that the glass is half full. Many smart people would argue that this model of US policy has by and large worked.

They argue that US support of the region’s rulers, capable or incapable, has prevented the entire region from going up in flames. But others argue, quite effectively on the basis of the existing record, that the capacity of America’s allies from Morocco to Indonesia to live up to Washington’s expectations, especially in the war against terrorism, is diminishing.

Sooner or later, US policy will end up combining the “constructive instability” paradigm, which causes US intervention on the scale of Iraq with attendant consequences, and the “island of stability” exemplar that led the US to ignore the turbulence brewing under the Shah’s rule in Iran.

Ambassador Crocker has conducted himself successfully in Pakistan, retaining General Musharraf’s confidence and helping the general preserve his lifeline to Washington. The only thing the realists in the United States seek from Pakistan is full cooperation in tracking down Al-Qaeda operatives and shutting down the Taliban who have become a serious threat to stability in Afghanistan.

As he leaves Pakistan to deal with the mess in Iraq, Ambassador Crocker has communicated a subtle message to the military regime in Islamabad, which he has done much to save from the wrath of America’s “constructive instability” visionaries.

General Musharraf and his colleagues need to redefine their priorities and rebuild the capacity of the Pakistani state in the areas where it is lacking — counter-terrorism, law enforcement, limiting non-state armed groups.

The Pakistani state has become weak as its functionaries have expanded their role to include being the manipulators of domestic politics and dealers in urban real estate. Pakistan must become an effective state run under its constitution and the rule of law. Otherwise, it will continue to be a victim of terrorism as well as an alleged safe haven for terrorists.

The Task is cut out for Pakistan

Gulf News, February 21, 2007

The outgoing US ambassador to Pakistan, Ryan Crocker, has attempted to resolve the apparent contradiction between Washington’s view of General Pervez Musharraf as a critical ally in the war against terrorism and intelligence about terrorists still operating out of Pakistan.

“Pakistan has been fighting terrorists for several years and its commitment to counterterrorism remains firm,” Crocker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the hearing on his nomination as US ambassador to Iraq.

The challenge faced by Pakistan in coming to terms with Taliban fighters along its border with Afghanistan, he explained, lies in a lack of “capacity”.

As suicide bombings and general lawlessness illustrate the insecurity of millions of Pakistanis, Pakistan’s self-congratulating elite can now sit in the comfort of its drawing rooms and debate a new issue. What is worse, being doubted for lack of commitment as an American ally or being recognised as an incapable one?

Clearly, from the US point of view, the task expected of Pakistan is not being accomplished. One implication of Crocker’s assessment is that Pakistan must now brace itself for pressure in improving its capacity.

Alternatively, it would have to allow other US allies, possibly Nato, to complete the task to which Musharraf is committed but which Pakistan’s military and law enforcement machinery are unable to do.

There is an underlying message in Crocker’s faint praise for Pakistan that must not go unheeded. Crocker is an old-school diplomat who wants to deal with the world as it exists.

He opposed the Iraq war, rejecting the idea of some neoconservatives that instability can somehow be constructive. Traditional, “realist” diplomacy hinges on preserving the status quo in the interest of the United States.

Finding friendly rulers and then bolstering their capacity to fulfil strategic objectives has been the mainstay of US foreign policy in the greater Middle East for years. For this policy to work, US diplomats must gloss over the flaws and weaknesses of allies and ensure a constant flow of military and economic assistance.

The aid, and the dependence that results from it, is supposed to buy the US influence.

Concerns about democracy and human rights must be played down and critics must be assured that “slow but sure reform” is on its way.

The economic growth that results from injection of large doses of aid, coupled with stage-managed elections and some diversity in a semi-controlled media, are useful instruments of convincing sceptics that the glass is half full. Many smart people would argue that this model of US policy has by and large worked.

Existing record

They argue that US support of the region’s rulers, capable or incapable, has prevented the entire region from going up in flames. But others argue, quite effectively on the basis of the existing record, that the capacity of America’s allies from Morocco to Indonesia to live up to Washington’s expectations, especially in the war against terrorism, is diminishing.

Sooner or later, US policy will end up combining the “constructive instability” paradigm, which causes US intervention on the scale of Iraq with attending consequences, and the “island of stability” exemplar that led the US to ignore the turbulence brewing under the Shah’s rule in Iran.

Austro-Hungarian ruler Francis I is said to have adopted the maxim “Rule and Change Nothing” and advocates of the stability school in US foreign policy would do well to remember the result of that grand strategy.

Francis and his successors did succeed in ruling without changing their outlook for many decades but while they did not change, things around them did. Eventually the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed and the clever diplomacy of its many smart statesmen, including Prince Metternich, failed to save the day.

Crocker has conducted himself successfully in Pakistan, retaining Musharraf’s confidence and helping the general preserve his lifeline to Washington. The only thing the realists in the US seek from Pakistan is full cooperation in tracking down Al Qaida operatives and shutting down the Taliban who have become a serious threat to stability in Afghanistan.

As he leaves Pakistan to deal with the mess in Iraq, Crocker has communicated a subtle message to the military regime in Islamabad, which he has done much to save from the wrath of America’s “constructive instability” visionaries.

Musharraf and his colleagues need to redefine their priorities and rebuild the capacity of the Pakistani state in the areas where it is lacking – counter-terrorism, law enforcement, limiting non-state armed groups.

The Pakistani state has become weak as its functionaries have expanded their role to include be

The Victimhood Trap

Indian Express, February 7, 2007

The world’s 1.4 billion Muslims seem overwhelmingly enraged by the war in Iraq and the suffering caused by US military intervention. But there appears to be little outrage against the sectarian bloodletting that has led to more Iraqi casualties than war directly involving American troops.

Muslim leaders and intellectuals find it easier to criticise outsiders for the harm inflicted on fellow Muslims. When it comes to recognising the suffering caused by fellow believers, there is a tendency to fudge the issue.

The lack of democratic space in much of the Muslim world has prevented the emergence of mass non-violent protest movements, especially aimed at the conduct of other Muslims. It is common for demonstrators in Muslim countries to protest against the actions of Israel or the US. But one seldom hears of protests against the wrongs committed by Muslim regimes or, in Iraq’s case, sectarian militias. The violence perpetrated by Sudan’s regime in Darfur, for example, has gone by and large unprotested in much of the Muslim world.

Muslim thinkers and leaders have been preoccupied with the question of “how to reverse Muslim decline, especially in relation to the west.” There is still little effort to recognise the real reasons for Muslim humiliation and backwardness.

Islam’s early generations produced knowledge and wealth that enabled Muslim empires to dominate much of the world. But now almost half the world’s Muslim population is illiterate and the combined GDP of the member states of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) hovers near the GDP of France alone. More books are translated every year from other languages into Spanish than have been translated into Arabic over the last century.

In the year 2000, according to the World Bank, the average income in the advanced countries (at purchasing price parity) was $27,450, with the US income averaging $34,260. Last year, the US income went up to $37,500. Israel’s income per head stood at $19,320 in 2000 and was $19,200 last year. The average income of the Muslim world, however, stood at $3,700. The per capita income on PPP basis in 2003 of the only nuclear-armed Muslim majority country, Pakistan, was a meagre $2,060. Excluding the oil exporting countries, none of the Muslim countries had per head incomes above the world average of $7,350.

National pride in the Muslim world is derived from the rhetoric of “destroying the enemy” and “making the nation invulnerable.” Such rhetoric sets the stage for the clash of civilisations as much as specific western policies. It also serves as an opiate that keeps Muslims riled against external enemies with little attention paid to the internal causes of intellectual and economic decline.

The Muslim world needs a broad movement to review the material and moral issues confronting the Umma (the community of believers) and an introspection of Muslims’ own collective mistakes.

Muslims must peacefully mobilise against sectarianism and the violence and destruction in, say, Iraq. But for that, Muslim discourse would have to shift away from the focus on Muslim victimhood and towards taking responsibility, as a community, for our own situation.

The Quran describes Prophet Muhammad as the prophet of Mercy. Muslims begin all their acts, including worship, with the words, ‘In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful.’ The Quran also says ‘To you, your faith and to me, mine,’ which removes any theological basis for sectarian violence. But unfortunately these mercy-focused and peacemaking ideas are lost in the overall discourse in the Muslim world about reviving lost glory and setting right the injustice of western domination.

Once Muslims convince themselves that the sectarian violence is a Zionist or American conspiracy or that it is the result of American occupation, their rage gets diverted. There is little rage and resentment against fellow Muslims who are actually engaged in that meaningless violence and little room for a Muslim Martin Luther King to stand up and say “We are responsible for this and we need to put an end to it.”

Blaming the West won’t solve Muslims’s woes

Gulf News, February 7, 2007

The world’s 1.4 billion Muslims seem overwhelmingly enraged by the war in Iraq and the suffering caused by US military intervention. But there appears to be little, if any, outrage against the sectarian bloodletting that has led to more Iraqi casualties than war directly involving American troops.

Muslim leaders and intellectuals alike find it easier to criticise the outsiders (in this case the US) for the harm inflicted on fellow Muslims. When it comes to recognising the suffering caused by fellow believers, there is a tendency among Muslims to fudge the issue.

The lack of democratic space in much of the Muslim world has prevented the emergence of mass non-violent protest movements, especially when the protest needs to be aimed at the conduct of other Muslims.

It is common for demonstrators in Muslim countries to protest against the actions of Israel or the United States. But one seldom hears of protests against the wrongs committed by Muslim regimes or, in Iraq’s case, sectarian militias. The violence perpetrated by Sudan’s regime in Darfur, for example, has gone by and large unprotested in much of the Muslim world.

Since the emergence of Western nations as the world’s dominant powers, Muslim thinkers and leaders have been preoccupied with the question, “how to reverse Muslim decline, especially in relation to the West.”

The colonial experience, in particular, has had a deep-rooted impact on Muslim psyche. There is a rush to condemn the foreigners and the colonisers, coupled with a general unwillingness within the Muslim world to look inward and to identify where we may be going wrong ourselves. There is still little effort to recognise the real reasons for Muslim humiliation and backwardness.

Dominate

Islam’s early generations produced knowledge and wealth that enabled Muslim empires to dominate much of the world. But now almost half the world’s Muslim population is illiterate and the combined GDP of the member states of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) hovers near the GDP of France alone. More books are translated every year from other languages into Spanish than have been translated into Arabic over the past century. Fifteen million Greeks buy more books every year than almost 300 million Arabs.

In the year 2000, according to the World Bank, the average income in the advanced countries (at purchasing price parity) was $27,450, with the US income averaging $34,260.

Last year, the US income went up to $37,500. Israel’s income per head stood at $19,320 in 2000 and was $19,200 last year. The average income of the Muslim world, however, stood at $3,700. The per capita income on PPP basis in 2003 of the only nuclear-armed Muslim majority country, Pakistan, was a meagre $2,060. Excluding the oil exporting countries, none of the Muslim countries of the world had per head incomes above the world average of $7,350.

National pride in the Muslim world is derived not from economic productivity, technological innovation or intellectual output but from the rhetoric of “destroying the enemy” and “making the nation invulnerable”. Such rhetoric sets the stage for the clash of civilisations as much as specific Western policies. It also serves as an opiate that keeps Muslims riled up against external enemies with little attention paid to the internal causes of intellectual and economic decline.

Review

The Muslim world needs a broad movement to review the material and moral issues confronting the Umma (the community of believers). But so far calls for removing the vestiges of colonialism and setting right historic injustices have prevailed over a more realistic effort to combine condemnation of wrongs committed by others within introspection of Muslims’ own collective mistakes.

Muslims must rise and peacefully mobilise against sectarianism and the violence and destruction in, say, Iraq. But before that can happen, Muslim discourse would have to shift away from the focus on Muslim victimhood and towards taking responsibility, as a community, for our own situation.

The Quran describes the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) as the prophet of mercy. Muslims begin all their acts, including worship, with the words, “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful.”

The Quran also says “To you, your faith and to me, mine,” which removes any theological basis for sectarian violence. But unfortunately these mercy-focused and peacemaking ideas are lost in the overall discourse in the Muslim world about reviving the lost glory and setting right the injustice of Western domination.

Once Muslims convince themselves that the sectarian violence is a Zionist or American conspiracy or that it is the result of American occupation, their rage gets diverted. There is little rage and resentment against fellow Muslims who are actually engaged in that meaningless violence and, therefore, little room for a Muslim Martin Luther King to stand up and say “We are responsible for this and we need to put an end to it.”